Peanut Butter and Whisky
by paganpunk2
Summary: They really were an odd pair. (Friday night Joe/Dex fluffiness. Humor, introspection, and hurt/comfort. T for mild language. Can be read either as straight friendship or as the prequel to something else - reader's choice)


Dex sat hunched over on the sofa, a thin paperback in his hands and absorption writ large on his face. The handle of a teaspoon protruded from his lips. The spoon's business end had been loaded with peanut butter a minute earlier, but a gentle bobbing suggested that this was no longer the case. Sure enough, when the utensil was withdrawn it had been licked clean.

Joe smiled faintly as the spoon was lowered back into the jar clamped loosely between Dex's crossed legs. "You know you're halfway, don't you?"

"Huh?" Cinnamon-tinted eyes tore themselves from the page and trained themselves on him. "The book?"

"No. The peanut butter."

"...Oh." There was real disappointment in the sigh that followed this acknowledgement. "Guess I'd better save the rest for next weekend."

"Here." Joe reached forward from his seat behind his desk. "Give it over. You won't be as tempted if it's in the drawer down here instead of in your room. And you know I wouldn't touch that sludge with a..." He trailed off, his forehead crinkled with thought.

"A ten-foot pole?"

"I was trying to come up with something better than that."

"There isn't anything better than that, Cap. That's why it's a cliché." Dex screwed the lid back onto the jar he'd been eating from and tossed it carefully into Joe's waiting hands. "How's the budget look in terms of rebuilding the hangars?"

"Awful. Your peanut butter habit is bankrupting us."

"Oops. I could switch to whisky?"

"After _peanut butter_?" Joe shuddered. "That's sacrilege."

"Sorry. Must be my New England Anglican upbringing."

"You use peanut butter and Scotch for communion, do you?"

"Sure. I mean, that was all we had at the first Thanksgiving. It's kind of a tradition now."

The pair smirked at each other until Joe shook his head. "At least go wash your mouth out."

"You think soap will go better with the booze than peanut butter?"

Joe could barely suppress his mirth. Moments like this one were why he rolled his eyes when people labelled his chief engineer 'serious'. "Rinse with water, Dex. Just water. Not soap. Unless I'm treading on another cherished Dearborn family tradition?"

"Eh, you know how old Puritan stock is. We don't give up on soap until about thirty seconds before we lose our faith." Dex made to leave the office, then paused at the door. "It's a good thing, though," he said over his shoulder. "What you said."

"When?"

"Just now. About not having to use soap."

"Why?"

"Been out for twenty-odd years."

"Is that why your jokes stink so terribly?"

"Aw." How Dex could make such a sad noise whilst grinning so broadly, Joe couldn't imagine. "Hurtful."

"Will a double kiss it and make it better?"

"Only one way to find out." And with that, Dex disappeared into the hallway.

Chuckling, Joe bent down and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. The space had been intended to hold files, but there wasn't room for much paper once you put a bottle or two of Scotch and a jar of peanut butter in. It was a design flaw, for sure. Not for the first time, Joe thought about asking Dex to build him a more intelligent workspace. But then there were so many more important things to do. After all, he couldn't fly a desk. Although...

"Thinking about the flying desk again?"

"It's not an impossible idea," Joe answered defensively as Dex occupied a chair across from him. "You've said so yourself."

Dex took a sip from the generous pour in his glass, swallowed, and winced. "The papers would go everywhere."

"Then make heavier paper. Or paper with a higher mass, or...however gravity works, Dex."

"Harder to get off the ground with a heavier paper load, Cap." Another sip, another swallow, another wince, but less intense this time. "I did have an idea the other day, though. About paper reduction."

"Any scheme that would make your office less of a fire trap has my approval."

"Office? I thought that space across the hall was just a filing room."

"Well, at this point we might as well re-label it as such." Dex smiled and shrugged at that, the motion half bashful, half amused. "Anyway, what's your idea?"

"It's nothing major. Just a screen where you could view and edit different papers. Like a typewriter, but without actual paper. There'd have to be some way to share your work – some way for one person to make a document and get it to someone else without any _paper_ paper coming into play – but that can't be too different from what we do already with telephones and radar. Like...telephone calls for your eyes."

"Telephone calls...for your eyes?"

"Something like that." Dex was frowning, his gaze trained on the wall beyond Joe's shoulder. "Only...it's not permanent. Like a conversation, that's permanent. You can't take it back. But if you type something out, you can throw it away before you send it. Or erase it, if it's on a screen. Is that the right word, though, if there's no eraser...?"

Joe leaned back in his chair and listened. The cinnamon of Dex's eyes was darker now than it had been. Toasted, maybe, by the heat of his intellect. Joe didn't generally think of himself as the poetic sort, but he liked that line. He liked this, too, this moment, this setting, this genial schedule they'd fallen into so many years ago. Last Friday, when Dex had still been missing, had been hell. They were supposed to be together on Friday nights. Fridays were theirs, theirs to spend indulging their own bad habits and cheerfully tolerating each other's. Joe needed their little tradition, and the thought of it ending had brought tears to his eyes more than once.

It was alright, though, now. Half a jar of peanut butter was gone, and soon half a bottle of Scotch would be, too. The former was in Dex's stomach already, and the majority of the latter would find itself in Joe's within the next hour. Happy days were here again.

Never happier, in fact. All the world saving in, well, the world had yet to make Joe feel quite the level of joy that came over him during these quiet evenings. What Dex was doing now, voicing his stream of consciousness, was the single most intimate activity that Joe had ever been a party to. Sex was delightful, of course, particularly when the woman in question was skilled or attractive or – better still – both at the same time. But not even the most daring of his bedroom partners had ever bared themselves to him as completely as Dex did every Friday.

In truth, Joe knew why everyone else thought of Dex as a serious man. Dex hadn't poked fun at his Mayflower and Massachusetts Bay roots earlier just for fun. Reserve and self-reliance were deep-seated in the Dearborn line, and he possessed both traits in abundance. Had his mother's mother not been a wry Shropshire-born debutante capable of finding humor even in her noble father's penury, the portrait of Dex currently hanging in his family's antique mansion might well have been as dour as all those beside it.

As it was, his upbringing and his youthful precociousness had conditioned him to stay silent until he was sure of both what he had to say and the social acceptability of sharing it. This was why one-sided conversations like the one going on about the document screen were so precious to Joe. They revealed the rivers of thought that fed the sea of Dex's genius, and that was a topography that none but the most trusted could ever hope to have a glimpse of.

"...Anyway, it's an idea. And something like that would make a flying desk almost realistic. _Almost_."

"Hmm." Joe met the frank gaze that had come back out of the ether to connect with his own. "Well, this screen of yours sounds completely impossible. Which means that when you inevitably do build it, it will be incredible." He tipped his glass in Dex's direction, a miniature salute of recognition. "I can't wait to see it." Then, bringing the whisky to his lips, he drank.

Funny – he thought he'd poured himself a double, too, but there wasn't much left to down. A refill was in order. "Another?" he offered Dex first.

"Nah. I'm good. But thanks."

"Suit yourself." He'd known that would be the answer. Add sobriety to Dex's list of laudable family traits. Jealousy flashed through him. No, that wouldn't do. Drown the bastard emotion, and pour out another measure in case it reared its head again.

"...You know you're halfway?"

"What?" Surely not. And yet, sure enough. "Damn." How had that happened? He must have been refreshing his glass unconsciously while he was watching the fractals of Dex's mind unfold before him.

Dex stood up, covering a yawn with one hand. Joe glanced at his watch. Midnight had come at some point, stealing up without him knowing it. "C'mon, Cap," Dex said. "Bed time for both of us."

"Your English is coming out," Joe remarked as he gained his feet unsteadily. When Dex blinked at him, he went on. "Imperious."

"Oh." That same sad inflection as earlier, but this time there was no grin to mark it as a ruse. "Well, you know. Old family habits die hard."

Joe couldn't keep his eyes from sliding, just for a moment, to the bottle still sitting atop his blotter. "...Right." To cover for his brief distraction, he waved a hand towards the door. "Lead on."

They crossed the dark, robot-pitted flight line without speaking further. When they'd climbed the barracks stairs to their respective quarters, which like their offices were located directly across the hall from one another, Dex gave him a tiny smile. "Night, Cap."

Nightcap. That _did_ sound good. Except... "Dex. Wait."

Dex paused. "...You had too much."

"It was the same amount as always." Joe could hear a whine rising in his own voice. He hated it, hated it like he hated the demons that were suddenly crawling out from the crevices of his psyche. But he couldn't do anything about either enemy.

"It was less, actually. I don't usually have a double. But you still had too much."

"Don't say that." If he'd really had too much, then that meant that he oughtn't want another round the way he did. So badly. "It's...not the whisky."

"It's not _just_ the whisky, you mean."

"...Yes." It was other things, just like always, too many other things, and now this new thing on top of it. "Dex..."

A warm hand, soft in spite of its calluses and work-toned muscle, closed around his wrist. "Okay. Relax. Let's get out of the hallway, for starters."

Out of the hallway. So _practical_, so conscious of how things might look to others who didn't, couldn't, understand. The door of Joe's room shut behind them. "Dex?"

"Hush." A nudge started him in the direction of the bed. "Lay down."

"You're not...I mean-?" He couldn't leave. If he left, even to just across the hall, Joe would lose it. He knew he would. Ever since he and Polly had walked through Dex's smashed-up workshop – god, there'd been blood on the floor, how had he forgotten about wanting to puke when he saw that? – he'd felt the old helplessness, hopelessness, hovering in the background. But it should have gone now, should have gone as soon as he had Dex back. It should have gone, but it hadn't. And he'd had no idea until just now how close he was to giving in to despair.

"I'm not going anywhere, Cap." Dex was in front of him again, his tie already missing, his cuffs unbuttoned. The cinnamon was toasted again, but this time it had gone too far. Black around the edges, black with anger. Comforting, though, because Joe knew that the anger wasn't directed at him. Old foes: Totenkopf, Franco, all of Japan. "You remember?"

Remember? He remembered everything. Nanjing. Manchuria. No; don't stop there. _After_. Remember after. When things had been better. When Dex had been beside him, just like now. Manchuria, like Totenkopf, was past. This was the after. So long as Dex was here, he thought he could hold onto that fact. "...Yes."

"Okay. Then lay down."

Joe stripped slowly to t-shirt, boxers, and socks. Familiar rustling told him that Dex was doing the same thing on the far side of the bed. When they were both under the covers, Dex turned off the lamp on his side and plunged them into darkness. A whimper was ready behind Joe's lips. Before it could more than half escape, though, the fingers that had killed the light were on his wrist once more. "Dex?"

"Right here. And not going anywhere."

"...Dex?"

"Mm-hmm?"

Half asleep already. Joe felt guilty, but he needed to talk. "It's Friday."

"Saturday, now, but...close enough."

"It's not supposed to be like this."

"What do you mean?"

Dex's confusion was understandable. There had been plenty of Friday nights, plenty of every nights, just like this, after Nanjing. But that didn't excuse things in Joe's mind. "This wasn't supposed to happen again," he ground out.

"I would have preferred it that way, too, Cap. But it is what it is. It's not your fault."

"But Fridays are _ours_, damn it!" No room for the demons. Not tonight, of all nights. God, how they pissed him off.

"That hasn't changed. They're still ours. This is just an unusual one. In a way, that's a good thing. It means that this isn't par for the course anymore."

He couldn't argue with that, so he stared towards the ceiling and combed through emotions instead. Dex's breathing was deepening back towards slumber when Joe spoke. "If you hadn't been here-"

"Stop." A gentle order, but firm, knowing, certain. "Don't go there. You know it won't help."

"I have to say it."

"Cap-"

"Dex, if you hadn't been here tonight – if you hadn't been there, on that island, and alive, and sound – the world wouldn't have been worth saving." The fingers on his arm stiffened. "Listen, I'm sorry if that bothers your Puritan sensibilities, but...I had to say it."

Silence drew out. Then the darkness in front of Joe's eyes – not, thank goodness, the one that lurked behind them – laughed. "...Dex?"

The laugh came again. Relief, amusement, catharsis; there were a thousand sentiments in the sound, but Joe could only parse out the most obvious. A weight materialized on his shoulder as Dex pillowed his head there. "My 'Puritan sensibilities'," he said quietly, "don't apply when you're involved. I thought you would have figured that out by now."

"Well, I don't have your brain for figuring things out with."

"You do have my brain. It's just not inside _your_ head."

"I'm not so sure about that, sometimes, Dex. That you aren't in my head all the time." Like earlier, when Dex had just _known_ what was needed. They hadn't shared a bed like this is nearly two years, and yet here they were, without the need ever being spoken out loud.

"I still thought it was pretty obvious."

"...Maybe it is. I don't know. Anyway...I meant what I said." He pulled his wrist free, then took Dex's fingers into his own and held them tightly. "There wouldn't have been a point to any of it, if you'd been-" Blood, blood on the floor. So much, so fresh. Someone else's, he knew now, but then there'd been no telling. "You know."

"Yeah. I know. And now _you_ know."

"Know what?"

"How _I _felt. Before. And for a lot longer, Cap." Dex's voice had gone husky. "For a hell of a lot longer."

Ah. Yes. Always Nanjing. Always Manchuria. Some things were inescapable. Joe couldn't even be upset about the implication that Dex's worries over all those long, desperate weeks in China had been greater than his own, more recently banished fears. If it had taken six months to track down Totenkopf, could Joe even have done it? He doubted it. He liked to think that he would have held on to sanity so long as the search was active, but he knew himself too well to really believe it. Not when it might still have been Dex's blood on the floor. "...Dex?"

"Mm?"

"You know you're incredible."

"That's what everyone else says."

There'd been disappointment in his tone. "You don't like it?"

"It's alright coming from them. They don't know me." A sigh ghosted along Joe's throat. "I guess I just expected something better from you."

"You didn't earlier, with the cliché. You said I couldn't improve on that."

"I'm not a cliché."

No. He wasn't. People made him out to be, but they were wrong. "Fine. You're amiable enough, but you hide your real emotions so thoroughly that you come off as work-obsessed and a little cold. You have a demanding streak. Nothing's ever completely _done_ for you – you're always going back, tearing things down, rebuilding them. You eat entirely too much sugar. And you can't take a compliment when it's really meant. Is that better?"

"...Yes," Dex whispered. "It is."

"But _why_?" Joe's own flaws were obvious to anyone who'd known him for five minutes. He couldn't fathom why Dex, so seemingly perfect, would want to have faults assigned to him.

"Because it means you really see me. You see me, and you accept me for who I am. I'm not an example to you. I don't fall under one label, 'boss' or 'genius' or things like that. I'm just a person, with problems and pet peeves and quirks that aren't cute. With you I'm allowed to be that way. To be myself. And I need that, Joe. Because I've never felt that I could just be a person, just be my real self, with anyone else."

Joe closed his eyes against sudden dampness. "I still think you're incredible. An incredible person."

"You're pretty incredible yourself, Cap. At least, I've always thought so."

"I'll accept that, since it's you saying it." A wicked smile curved Joe's lips. "And since _I'm_ actually capable of taking a compliment."

Dex laughed. "Oh, that's nice."

"I thought you wanted me to admit your shortcomings?" Teasing. It was Friday night, and they were back to teasing. Full circle. What demons?

"I do. But I had to say something, you know. Even if it wasn't very good."

"Yes," Joe chuckled. "I know." A long minute passed. "We _are_ an odd pair," he remarked eventually. "Polly said that. I about let her have a piece of my mind for it, but..." But she'd been right.

Dex slid a little closer. God, he was warm. How did the world not see all the heat that was constantly being generated, restrained, and recycled behind that cool workday exterior? "Like peanut butter," he murmured. Half asleep again, now that the moment of crisis had passed. "Peanut butter and whisky."

Joe's smile softened. "Well, I can certainly see why Thanksgiving caught on." There was no answer. "...Dex?" Out like a light, his head still atop Joe's shoulder, their fingers entwined. Joe wondered what shade of cinnamon had been present in the instant before Dex had fallen asleep. Too late to find out. But he could live with that, he thought as his own eyes closed, at least for now. Next Friday would be soon enough for such questions.


End file.
